


The Sum of My Parts

by eveningsoother (WhichWolfWins)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, I really don't know what this is, I'm holding it for a friend, Implied/referenced Johnlock, Johncroft, Light Angst, M/M, Math Kink, Mathematics, math metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 09:29:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5243240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhichWolfWins/pseuds/eveningsoother
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If A, then B.<br/>A is false, therefore B is false.</p><p>If A, then B.<br/>A is true, therefore B is true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sum of My Parts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phipiohsum475](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phipiohsum475/gifts).



> For phipiohsum475, because doldrums, and because modus ponens: If A = I love you and B = I love you, and A is true, then B is true and I love you times 2. :D

_John,_

I am not a man of many words, as I’m sure, by now, you are well aware. 

I have lived the sum of my years with the hypothesis that if I lived my life holding everything at arms length, then nothing could ever affect me. 

That I would live as a line parallel to all other parallel lines, on a constant course to my eventual conclusion. 

I believed I had considered all the variables, the finite number of things that could possibly set me on an unknown course and, thus, I factored in those possibilities accordingly. 

_There was one thing I could not have predicted, John._

Two independent events that were not mutually exclusive - 

two lonely, congruent men both in need of each other - 

two halves of the same whole. 

If I added you and him, there was a 100% probability that I didn’t have a chance. 

If I were to divide myself into 4 quadrants, 

all elements would be equal to zero. 

_You are not worthy of nothing._

We are not like terms. 

In a world of goldfish, I was the removable discontinuity - alone of my own making, alone to drown in my own loneliness. 

Before you, I did not know that that’s what it was. 

Loneliness was but another element. 

A negative without a positive does not know that it is, in fact, a negative. If a tree falls in a forest - if a goldfish drowns in a pond - 

But you, John, were the one factor I never knew to consider. 

In the equation that is my life, you were the solution to a problem I was not, of yet, aware. 

The transversal line to my parallel life. 

  


_John, __  
_

I am not a man of many words, 

but I have experienced infinite, uncountable things. 

Before you, I had: 

cried precisely three times in my life. 

been beaten bloody four, 

kissed several people under false pretense, 

and been kissed and fucked against a door. 

I had lost one brother and nearly lost one more, 

I had wished for the end, John, and wanted _nothing_ more. 

Using basic arithmetic, I can conclude that none of these things is in anyway equal to anything I have known since you - a truth which has become self-evident. 

You are the common denominator to my continued existence. 

Because of you, I can say that I am a happy man. 

If I am to live countless more years until my eventual decreasing function, 

I hope that you will continue to be integral in the sequence of following days. 

  


_John,_

I hope from this letter you will be able to use the equation of my words to find the correct conclusion, for I do not know how to tell it to you with these lips of mine. 

It was a complicated thing you asked me, but it is something of which I hope you and I share the same answer to, _my John_.

  
_Mycroft Holmes._  


**Author's Note:**

> So, I probably should've warned you that math was my worst subject in school, but English wasn't, so I figured English > math.  
> I have a [tumblr](http://eveningsoother.tumblr.com/). If you would like to, you can follow me there!  
> I also co-run [this](http://mycroftandjohn.tumblr.com/) Johncroft blog - check it out for more Mycroft and John goodness!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
